How to detect SSD in Mac OS X?

Question

Is there a reliable, quick, deterministic way (i.e. not a benchmark) to check whether the system drive Mac OS X is on is a Solid State Drive?

Is there any other indicator how well disk handles parallel access? I'm trying to adjust number of threads that my program is going to use for disk-bound operations.

I'm not interested in raw speed or seek time, only which type of access – serial or parallel – is faster for the drive. I don't expect users of my program to use iSCSI or RAID. SSD is my focus, anything else is nice-to-have.

Device Characteristics of IOAHCIBlockStorageDevice contains this information. How can I read it programmatically?

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So far I've figured out it goes like this: (following is pseudocode)

match = IOBSDNameMatching(kIOMasterPortDefault,0,"disk0s2");
IOServiceGetMatchingServices(kIOMasterPortDefault, match, &iterator);
while(entry = IOIteratorNext(iterator)) {
   do {
     entry = IORegistryEntryGetParentEntry(nextMedia, kIOServicePlane, &entry);
     dict = IORegistryEntryCreateCFProperty(nextMedia, 
            CFSTR(kIOPropertyDeviceCharacteristicsKey), kCFAllocatorDefault, 0);
     [dict objectForKey:CFSTR(kIOPropertyMediumTypeKey)];
   } 
   while(!dict && entry); 
}

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Edit: Here's complete source code. I've verified it works with Intel SSD and OCZ Vertex.

Answer 1

Actually, I think you should go the benchmarking route, because it more accurately answers your question - you don't really care that the disk happens to be an SSD, you just care that the disk is really fast. What if the user is using a fast RAID setup, or a Fiber Channel array, or is using iSCSI?

Just read a bunch of random sectors from the underlying /dev/diskX and if it meets your requirements you can treat it as a "Fast" drive

Answer 2

If you're trying to get that kind of information, you're best guess is IOKit.

You can try some of it's functionality using the ioreg command line tool or the IORegistryExplorer.

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Here's some code that might help you. It fetches all hard drives that aren't a RAID and aren't partitions. This isn't what you want, but it might get you started.

#import "TWDevice.h"

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <sys/ioctl.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <paths.h>
#include <sys/param.h>
#include <IOKit/IOKitLib.h>
#include <IOKit/IOBSD.h>
#include <IOKit/storage/IOMedia.h>
#include <CoreFoundation/CoreFoundation.h>
#include <IOKit/Kext/KextManager.h>


@implementation TWDevice

@synthesize name, devicePath, size, blockSize, writable, icon;

+ (NSArray *)allDevices {
    // create matching dictionary
    CFMutableDictionaryRef classesToMatch;
    classesToMatch = IOServiceMatching(kIOMediaClass);
    if (classesToMatch == NULL) {
        [NSException raise:@"TWError" format:@"Classes to match could not be created"];
    }

    // get iterator of matching services
    io_iterator_t mediaIterator;
    kern_return_t kernResult;
    kernResult = IOServiceGetMatchingServices(kIOMasterPortDefault,
                                                                      classesToMatch,
                                                                      &mediaIterator);

    if (kernResult != KERN_SUCCESS) {
        [NSException raise:@"TWError" format:@"Matching services did not succed."];
    }

    // iterate over all found medias
    io_object_t nextMedia;
    NSMutableArray *detectedDevices = [NSMutableArray array];
    while (nextMedia = IOIteratorNext(mediaIterator)) {
        NSMutableDictionary *properties;
        kernResult = IORegistryEntryCreateCFProperties(nextMedia,
                                                                                  (CFMutableDictionaryRef *)&properties,
                                                                                  kCFAllocatorDefault, 0);

        if (kernResult != KERN_SUCCESS) {
            [NSException raise:@"TWError" format:@"Getting properties threw error."];
        }

        // is it a whole device or just a partition?
        if ([[properties valueForKey:@"Whole"] boolValue] &&
            ![[properties valueForKey:@"RAID"] boolValue]) {
            TWDevice *device = [[[TWDevice alloc] init] autorelease];

            device.devicePath = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%sr%@", _PATH_DEV, [properties valueForKey:@"BSD Name"]];
            device.blockSize = [[properties valueForKey:@"Preferred Block Size"] unsignedLongLongValue];
            device.writable = [[properties valueForKey:@"Writable"] boolValue];
            device.size = [[properties valueForKey:@"Size"] unsignedLongLongValue];

            io_name_t name;
            IORegistryEntryGetName(nextMedia, name);
            device.name = [NSString stringWithCString:name encoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];

            …

            [detectedDevices addObject:device];
        }

        // tidy up
        IOObjectRelease(nextMedia);
        CFRelease(properties);
    }
    IOObjectRelease(mediaIterator);

    return detectedDevices;
}

@end

Answer 3

This only seems possible for internal drives. I could not find a way using IOKit to query a Samsung T5 external USB 3 SSD for its SSD-ness (nor a Toshiba Canvio USB HDDD). I did manage for the internal drive in my MBP, though.

Disk utility also doesn’t think the Samsung is an SSD, so that makes me think there may not be a way, other than to measure actual performance.